Machine gun found hidden in closet at New York's JFK Airport

Investigators are trying to figure out how a machine gun ended up hidden in the ceiling of an office at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport before being discovered this week.

An electrician was doing renovation work at JFK's Terminal One on
Thursday when he stumbled upon a Mac-11, a subcompact machine
pistol that can unload its 32-round magazine in under two
seconds.

Port Authority officers were immediately deployed to to scene to
run ballistics tests and conduct an investigation, but so far
officials aren't sure how the gun ended up there or how long it
had been stowed away. Through testing, they hope to determine if
the weapon was ever used in a crime.

According to a statement issued by the Port Authority Police
Department, the room where the gun was found is locked,
accessible only to a few people and located outside the
terminal's secure area.

The electrician found the weapon in the ceiling of a maintenance
closet in the office, ABC News reported, inside a plastic box
covered in dust.

Terminal One serves as an international used by Air France,
Turkish Airlines, Korean Air and others at JFK, a Queens, NY
airport that was ranked the busiest in the world with regards to
non-domestic travel in 2011.

The New York Daily News quotes an anonymous source as saying the
particular office in the terminal has been untouched for ages,
suggesting that the gun could have gone undetected for years.

“The office in the terminal where the
gun was found hasn’t been upgraded or renovated since the late
1990s — so the gun could have been hidden there for
years,” the Daily News
reported.